Mr. Edmund Honohan:

There is the unfair consumer contract directive of 1993. We were flying high in 1993, which the Deputy is too young to remember. That directive was transposed here in 1995 and nobody paid a blind bit of bother to it. There were a few English cases that were of use. Eventually the Irish courts thought they ought to look at the directive because we had transposed regulations, Irish regulations and not EU regulations, to incorporate it.

There is a list of unfair terms and another list of qualifying criteria. There is also a list dealing with "subject to". One of them is set out in the opening statement I gave. Technically, the consumer has the backing of Brussels and the EU in this area with regard to unfair terms. Fortunately for us, we have a perfect mechanism and architecture here for supervising and enforcing this. The main supervisor is, of course, the Central Bank. We will take a breather here and ask whether we can be serious that the Central Bank is supposed to oversee, monitor, police and regulate these unfair terms. Yes, it is designated by SI 14 of 2000. Has anybody ever seen the Central Bank take an action in court for a declaration as to the suitability or fairness or unfairness of particular terms? The current position on extra interest rates being charged by vulture funds is a classic example of where the Central Bank, wearing its consumer hat if I can put it this way, should be first in the queue down to the Four Courts to say these terms must be looked at rather more carefully than has been done so far.